Intervention study for stress reduction by workplace environment based on occupational stress models

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This study examined the effectiveness of healthy work organization interventions on worker mental health and performance. An inner city, acute-care hospital and an electric manufacturing company were the subject study populations. Twelve hospital wards and fourteen lines manufacturing an electronic device were randomly allocated into intervention and control groups, at the respective study cites. Our intervention involved establishing and facilitating employee problem-solving teams in the organizations. The intervention process was directed at improving the work environment to facilitate stress reduction. Based on a stress survey conducted among the employees, teams were charged with developing and implementing action plans tailored to the needs of their specific site. It was hypothesized that if an intervention process emphasized information exchange, employee participation and social networking, and employee empowerment, such activities would have a good affect on mental health indic … More es and/or behaviors of the participants.Many environmental improvements were achieved during the almost one-year intervention period. In the study of the inner city, acute-care hospital, the turnover of nurses was less rapid among the seven intervention wards compared to the control ones, but the difference was not statistically significant. As for the manufacturing workers, there were statistically significant intervention effects on minor psychiatric mobility and self-reported job performance.The findings suggest that theory-oriented participatory intervention for workplace improvements to facilitate stress reduction has beneficial effects on employees' mental health and behaviors. However, the results were not conclusive. Several methodological limitations are considered : the rather short observation period, selection of outcome measures, ways of randomization including the selection of the units, and sample attrition appeared to be crucial.However, process evaluation from interviews and qualitative questionnaires showed the feasibility of intervention and overall subjective evaluation of the activities were good. Process evaluation also revealed several obstacles against conducting participatory intervention. Overcoming these obstacles and methodological flaws would produce clearer findings. Less